last public LJ post

All new public posts will be at:

http://drewkitty.dreamwidth.org/

I expect this to be my last public post to LJ. Sorry, folks.

I will still keep reading LJ and dreamwidth. If I had time, I'd figure out how to aggregate the two. Too bad, so sad.

If you are reading this in the hopes of getting in touch with me, my username aaht Go0gle D0ht C0hm will work as an E-mail address where I can be reached. I may check LJ messages, but no promises and read the disclaimer on my profile.

Thanks.

Anonymoose and social control

The rise of an organization somewhat like Anonymous is one of the things I hypothesized in my unpublished (and never to be published) dissertation. The one I was frostily informed was not relevant to either sociology or criminology, as there would be no such thing as crime on the Internet, and certainly not first-stage insurgency. Stay classy, UC Irvine.

In an arms race between the architects of formal social control and the deviants who would evade them, both false flagging and anonymity are essential weapons.

Recent moves:

- Someone hacked the BART Police Officer's Association (POA) database and released publicly the addresses and phone numbers of over 100 BART officers. That this is illegal and endangers officer safety is self-evident. Party Van coming soon to a n00b near you! (Even in France, dear.)

- Anonymous (the group) announced that they would again hold a physical protest on 22 August (Monday) at 5 PM, after their humiliating defeat at the hands of BART Operations last week. (That second part was not part of their announcement, but is obvious from what happened on the ground.)

Predictions:

- Despite amateur grandstanding, Anonymous will succeed only in pissing off San Francisco commuters, because BART Ops is too smart for #opbart to outmaneuver. #epicfail No sympathy will be gained.

- Anonymous will adapt to fare evasion strategies and thereby give up what little high ground they've had in the PR war to date. No sympathy will be gained.

- Some poor individual BART PD officer will blow it in a career-ending way, hopefully not in a fatal way for those around them. Releasing addresses is dirty pool. Police take their chances; targeting families is bad karma for all. No sympathy will be gained.

- Some Anonymous griefer will be tuned up, probably in the street but possibly inside a station, by annoyed commuter(s). Note that the idiots holding doors open on Monday were pushed out of the doors by an anonymous (small a) train rider. No sympathy will be gained.

Dramatis Personae:

- Anonymous: composed of three internal factions, "hactivists" who are in it for the philosophy, "griefers" who are in it for the lulz (/b/tards) and "players" who are bankrolling to further their own ends. This third group I'm most curious about: are they trying to support Anonymous as a counter to the rise of bureaucratization, or is this back-channel reification through agents provocateur? We'll know in 25-50 years. Will grief for beatings.

- News Media: Your Children Are On Fire, News At 11! Profits from taking pictures of beatings.

- Local Protesters: people who are upset about the history of police oppression in their communities, to the point that they no longer give a @#!& about 'justified' police shootings (Civic Center) and non-shootings (suspect shot himself, Bayview). Will continue protesting regardless of improvements in beatings.

- BART Operations: the guys who want to keep the trains running on time. Would be Mussolini types, which is to say managers. #muBARTek nails it on the head. Schedules will continue unless beatings improve.

- Law Enforcement Community: local, state and Federal law enforcement which is getting quietly torqued by seeing Anonymous playing against them instead of Scientology. Arrests will continue until beatings improve.

- BART PD: works for BART Operations, kind of sort of a member of the law enforcement community (but not really), it is a lonely couple of years to be BART PD. They've made considerable effort to do better, which has dragged them up from awful to mediocre. I almost feel sorry for the underdogs . . . but I know the history of shootings past and present. One justified shooting does not make up for one negligent homicide and two straight-up murders. Disdain will continue in the hopes that beatings improve.

Player's Notes:

Twitter continues to be the best tool for tracking the situation, except in realtime where a BART scanner is helpful.

Anything I think someone should look at will be Twitter-tagged "#bartrage" after the forum of the same name.


Whoops! Comments now turned on. Sorry 'bout that.